1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a content recommendation system and a method thereof, in particular, to a context inference system and a method thereof which can provide an information to a user according to a context.
2. Description of Related Art
Personal handheld devices have been broadly spread along with the advancement in handheld techniques and the reduction in the fabrication cost thereof. It is expected that with the constantly decreasing hardware cost, more software services will be provided. In other words, user innovative content services for handheld devices will become the mainstream of the market.
Presently, the most common content service received by cell phone users is short message service (SMS). However, according to a desirable operation logic of a mobile service, while providing a content to a user, the information provided should be pushed based on a context. For example, short messages regarding related activities within a specific area can be sent to all the mobile users within the area. However, such a content service cannot provide information to a user based on the features and context around the user, and accordingly such short messages are mostly considered junk messages to the user. Thereby, it is needed to develop a system for providing useful information based on the contexts of mobile users.
A context-aware mobile communication device is disclosed in U.S. Patent No. 2007/0032261 (“Context Awareness for A Mobile Communication Device”). In this disclosure, a context-awareness technique is integrated with a mobile communication device, wherein a preset personal or industrial context is stored in a RFID tag so that a user can select the desired context on the mobile communication device by using the RFID tag. A location context-aware mobile system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,020,494B2 (“Integrating Contextual Information into Mobile Enterprise Applications”). A mobile system integrated with a context-sensing technique is provided in this disclosure, wherein the location of a handheld device of a user is detected and different interfaces are provided to the user according to the locations of the handheld device so that the process for loading information into the handheld device is simplified and both the procedure and time for inputting information are reduced.
However, in foregoing conventional techniques, a preset interface is provided to a mobile user based on only the location of the user, thus, foregoing subject of providing useful information to the mobile user based on the features and context around the mobile user is still not realized. Thereby, it is needed to provide a context inference system which can provide a content service based on the features and context around a mobile user.